


chasing the echoes

by theexistentialteapot



Series: fractures in time [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Chilean History, Historical References, Hurt/Comfort, Immortality Guilt, Introspection, Miners Strike, Pre-Canon, Temporary Character Death, Violent Event, Workers rights, i had to take some liberties with turn of the century south american schooling, it's not survivor guilt if they die is it?, like...94 percent historically accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26066605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentialteapot/pseuds/theexistentialteapot
Summary: The church bell rings out in three joyful tones. With a sharp inhale, Joe sends a prayer skywards on the tails of doves.Gunfire chases the echoes.Joe is vaguely aware that Andy is dragging him backwards, snarling at his ear.They're killing them...-21st December 1907  -  Iquique, Chile
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: fractures in time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1892257
Comments: 40
Kudos: 276





	chasing the echoes

**Author's Note:**

> I appear to be writing again...
> 
> Huh.

_21 st December 1907, Iquique, Chile_

The church bells ring out in three joyful tones. With a sharp inhale, Joe sends a prayer skywards on the tails of doves.

Gunfire chases the echoes.

* * *

Joe is vaguely aware that Andy is dragging him backwards, snarling at his ear. His own fury is there, churning low in his stomach but for now a numbing shock has won out over his body. _They’re killing them…_ he thinks as Andy shoves him sideways. She punches the brick beside his head and her own embittered howl joins a building symphony of screaming. He pulls her bloodied hand to his chest and holds it firm, thumb rubbing at the stain. He swallows hard.

“We have to be ready,” he grinds out, their eyes meeting wide and furious. Andy nods, digging her thumbnail into the back of his hand and then pulls him further into the alley. “As soon as it stops.” He’s desperately trying to think practically now; they need a way in, a way out, god they might even need to dig in right here, and _Nicolò_ -

“Now, move.” Andy’s rounding corners with clipped efficiency, and he remembers to pull the pistol at his belt. The noise is dying down now. “We can get back in through the playground,” she says in a tight voice over her shoulder. Joe flinches and quickens his pace.

The rear of the schoolhouse comes into view and Andy pauses at the low fence. There are yellow ribbons twisted up the slats of the gate. Every window is shattered, every shutter is swinging. Broken glass and shards of wooden frame litter the hard court and herb gardens. A group of women are hunched under a windowsill, hands over their shaking faces as they cower against the stone. Final bullets thud into the interior wall and Joe is moving, skirting the fence and pointing out towards treeline.

“Go. Into the trees, go now,” he tells the women, pointing east. One has a baby in her arms, nodding, sobbing as she stumbles backwards. Two are tugging on the sleeve of another, a gaping wound in her cheek. “You have to go, she’s gone – run.” he says, swiftly detangling their hands. A wailing child trips out of the ruined doorway and is scooped up by the women as they stagger away. Andy moves into the space at his side, eyes fixed on the roof.

“Book was up top with the miners,” she says. While there is noise coming from within the school, there’s no movement from above. “Goddamn Silva, hijo de puta!”

“They can’t leave survivors, they’ll be sweeping the buildings – if it gets back to Santiago-”

“I know – we’ve got minutes. I’ll get Booker, meet you at the church. Fallback to Quipisca if it all goes to shit.” Joe nods before she’s finished speaking, already inching towards the door. _It’s been too long, where-_

“Joe.”

“Church, shit, Quipisca – I heard you.”

Andy holds his gaze for a moment, then turns away towards the school. “Be fast.”

* * *

Joe finds him in the westernmost classroom, body curving up from the stone.

For every room searched in fierce stoicism, blinkering himself against the mounting horrors – this one rushes up to greet him in obnoxious lividity. The little ones lie amongst their splintered desks, like discarded dolls. Their limp bodies curled together in their fear. There is a small boy slumped against the wall at his feet, his white smock drizzled in ropes of crimson over a heaving chest. Joe allows himself one aching glance across the room at Nicky’s still form, and then crouches quickly before the child, cupping his shaking face in his hands.

“You’re alright, you’re alright – let me see,” he murmurs in Spanish, shifting himself to block the boy’s view of his classmates. He moves his fingers quickly over the small chest and torso, finding a shallow graze across his ribs and a deeper one along his collar. The boy’s red eyes are fixed on Joe’s own now, sobs seizing and catching within him. Joe unties his neck scarf quickly and fastens it tightly around the boy’s own throat, pressing firmly. “There now, looks much better on you.”

Little hands grip tightly at his wrists, trying to pull Joe closer. He’s about to lift the boy up into his arms when there’s a crunch of broken glass from the hallway, and a young woman drags herself through the door on her knees. Joe spins sideways, pistol raised - but she’s crying out desperately, hands sticky with blood and reaching for the child. 

With a choked cry for his mother the boy is wriggling toward the door, and then is clasped in her arms. Joe exhales heavily, opens his mouth to tell her to go, to _run_ -

-and there’s a shallow breath from behind him

He’s across the room and on his knees in the space between heartbeats. Nicky is facedown, arms curled in against himself but now breathing raggedly. Joe’s eyes roll up in fierce gratitude for those breaths and he quickly runs his hands over Nicky’s shoulders and down his spine, following the line of scarlet rosettes stained over his bowed back.

“Nicolò?”

Nicky presses his palm to the stone to raise himself up, struggling for purchase on the bloody floor. Too bloody. Joe’s hand clenches hard in the damp fabric at the small of Nicky’s back, fingers tightening in dread- _that’s too much blood- he’s still bleeding-_

But his eyes catch a neat plait trailing under Nicky’s arm. Joe’s breath stalls violently in his throat.

Lifting his head sharply now, Nicky scrambles for traction in the blood with his free hand, his right curled beneath the head of the girl within the cage of his arms. He lifts his body away from her, their clothes clinging and sticking together. His brows knit briefly, ducking his chin to peer at his own chest. Then raises his eyes to trace her form. “No, I…”

The holes piercing her pinafore are a perfect reflection of the exit wounds on Nicky’s own chest. Joe’s heart seizes painfully, and he slides his hand up to rest at the nape of Nicky's neck as he whispers his uncertainty once more. “But I-

“We have to go Nico,” Joe tells him quietly, hating- _hating_ the world beyond the window with every fibre within him. Nicky nods absently but is still staring down at the little body cradled in his hands. He doesn’t move. “Come on, we-”

“I don’t understand.” Nicky's voice is quiet but clear. Eyes locked on unseeing eyes. Joe wants to yell, wants to hold him, wants to lead him out to the Plaza and unleash unholy hell at his side. But he touches the pads of his fingers to Nicky’s chin and tilts his face gently.

“I know _._ ” He pauses, so Nicky can see the truth in his eyes. “But you have done all you can.” A harsh sound erupts from Nicky’s throat and Joe winces, _knowing_. He opens his mouth to speak again, but there is a sharp call and response from the school’s forecourt and Nicky meets his eyes with a grimace. Joe cups his hands beneath slight shoulder blades, and together they lower her back to the floor. Nicky pulls her sodden plaits back to rest across her front, and Joe gently closes her wide eyes with a whispered prayer to carry her on. As they stand Nicky turns to survey the tragedy littered around him, and his expression starts to quake in a way Joe cannot bear for a second longer.

He knots their fingers together and pulls him from horror.

* * *

In the end, they do not speak of her until they have crossed the Bolivian border and made a more private camp. At the church, they had stood with Booker as he roared his wrath into the rafters, blood still dripping from his coat. They moved quickly through Quipisca, following Andy through the protective grooves in the earth with a small group of miners and their fractured families – seeing them safely into Noasa.

Nicky is sat at the ridge’s edge, feet hanging in the open air when he speaks the words once more.

“I don’t understand.”

Joe looks up against his side but does not speak. This will have been taking form in Nicky’s mind since they left Iquique. He hasn't pressed or pushed – knowing the words would come when Nicky was prepared to speak them into the world. He's felt his turmoil in other ways of course; the bite of his nails into Joe’s wrist as they slept, the hard press of his boots into the ground as they hiked – as though he could stamp his rage back down into the earth that had birthed it. Finding words to compliment such depth of feeling has always been harder for Nicky, less instinctive. Thus all that fall from his lips do so with the deliberation and care - not wishing to be misunderstood. Joe swore to himself aeons ago that he would treasure them all.

“There are days, when I don’t understand,” Nicky corrects softly, lifting his left hand to drag his fingers down his own chest. “What is the purpose of my body if not to fall, so that others may stand? What is the purpose of this gift, when it cannot be given?” He pauses, taking a measured breath. “I had her, I _shielded_ her, and it still was not enough. My body could not save her. My death was not enough.” Nicky sags back slightly now, jaw tightening in distress and Joe aches with him. “If death is not enough… I have nothing else to give.” 

Joe takes a raw moment to absorb the words, to give them space to breath – but his own are already formed and sure.

“Our deaths can be a gift for this world, I agree. We can give, and give, and we can give again. But all we can do is give Nicolò. We cannot control what is taken.” A charged pause chases the affirmation.

“So much was taken.” Nicky whispers into the sky.

“It was. What was her name?”

“Magdalena. Her name was Magdalena,” Nicky smiles around the sound. “I was trying to teach them the polka. She was the quickest.”

Joe grins now, his laugh a bark in the night. “I could hear them laughing from the Plaza, I wondered if you were trying to teach them arithmetic.” He takes a neat elbow to the ribs and uses the leverage to tug Nicky’s hands into his lap where he clutches them tightly, running fingertips over familiar knuckles. The view before them is effusively beautiful. The slighter hills roll together casting deep shadows into the valley’s clefts, and he can hear the rush of shallow rapids far below them. The red rock ridge they have settled on juts out into the clean air with pride, confident of its strength and place in the world. But the stars boast their beauty too stridently to be ignored. Joe cannot remember a night he could trace the constellations he learnt as a child so clearly. 

Nicky dips his head to the cradle of Joe’s shoulder, tension starting to leach from his frame. But Joe will not allow them to rest this night until one subject is unwaveringly refuted.

“My love, being unable to prevent their deaths does not void the joy brought to their lives that morning. I would have you know that.” His words are steady. “Death is not your only gift, nor is it your purpose. You have so much _more_ to give this world”

Nicky blinks slowly against the cotton of Joe’s shirt and presses his lips to his collar for a long moment. It’s acceptance, Joe knows. Grateful receipt of honest words.

“Do you feel it Yusuf? What is happening to this world?”

He does. Like a gnawing shadow on his heels. He struggles still to give it form. It’s like the world is racing against itself, ever hastening its pace. He can feel the panic of it - the pressure. It has always been this way, the bitter bite of competition having wounded lands of his heart long ago. A prize sought was a holy land, a shining and maddening city toyed over for generations. Deemed a worthy reward for the sacrifice of many lives.

Today it is 18 pence. A quick little girl, and her whole community lie cold in their grave this night for 18 pence. The exclusivity of their dirt such a point of pride for a country that its people ceased to have meaning. The behemoth of industrial greed blindly claiming them.

Joe’s words are heavy. “I feel it.”

“The world is changing. This is not the end, this growing carelessness for life.”

He picks a star, and pulls Nicky closer.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it was meant to be a small tumblr drabble just to get it out of my system. I have zero self control despite really trying not to write this.
> 
> The event taking place here is the Santa María School massacre of 1907 - the killing of striking Chilean nitrate miners along with their wives and children at at school in the Tarapacá Province. Please go have a read about it if you're interested! 
> 
> Borne of the idea that The Old Guard wouldn't necessarily have just been around for the big stuff. But that they would have been witness to many lesser known events throughout their long wander of the earth! The history books may not record their names, but Nicky will remember Magdalena. Hoping to make this a series of historical events, with a couple of lighter ones in there? 
> 
> If you have any questions about the history, the characters or just fancy a chat (I love a chat) I'm on tumblr at [the old kenzari](https://theoldkenzari.tumblr.com/)


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